Another sham with just crew benefits
Hardly - the whole point of the trial, as i see it, is to increase capacity by reducing the required fuel burn per leg.
Crew benefits? I'm not a Tri-motor walla, but i'm pretty sure they'd rather stick with their current deal with one crew in Muscat rather than now having 33% more crews away from home. OK, so it's not in the desert (and thus, of course, clearly just a jolly
), but that's not the crews' fault, is it?
The boys and girls want and need is an aircraft that turns up at the specified time and takes them home, in the shortest order possible.
Of course they do! And if this trial wasn't planned to produce such gains, then why would it even be considered? The airbridge is as stretched as any of the components that make up the HERRICK/TELIC commitment, and any flex that can be added to that can only be a good thing:
- Flex in Crew Duty Time to mean that any delays don't necessarily push the whole route into a delay - we don't write the rules, but they are there and are already streched too regularly (if not routinely) to get the job done. There are many unpredictable things that can delay a flight, this will enlarge the window for fixing those delays and still completing the task, with the same crew, within that day.
- Flex in load. That reduced fuel load per leg translates into an overall increased capacity. No
Gnd, it might not always appear that way, but what you see in the upper cabin, on your particular flight is a small fraction of the overall picture. Roughly, my guess gives each flight 25-30 tonnes more load from reduced fuel. For a RiP, that makes a lot of sense.
Uncle G